EXECUTIVES: IBM's Interchangeable Management Team

In The Organization Man, William H. Whyte
Jr. described the management training process at IBM: "By deliberately
exposing a man to a succession of environments, they best obtain that
necessity of the large organizationthe man who can fit in anywhere.
'The training,' as an IBM executive succinctly puts it, 'makes our men
interchangeable.' " Though that corporate portrait is 16 years old, IBM
proved once again last week that its leadership, like its computers, is
a smoothly running assemblage of interchangeable parts.